Abstract

The first attempt to normalize the practice of health professions in Navarre was the institution, in 1496, of the Guild of Saint Cosme and Saint Damian, for physicans, surgeons and chemists, which had a long life -until 1829, when it became a College- but a languid one: it had no other aim than protecting the interest of its members. A short time before the Old Kingdom joined Castile, the Royal Protomedicate was instituted in it, following the example of the castilian, but with a total autonomy and some particular characteristics: harmony was kept between both institutions, thanks to the members of the Guild: most of them were from Navarre, had a modest rural background, had studied in Zaragoza or Valencia and graduated at Irache, and used to exercise medicine in Pamplona. Training in situ of health professionals was attempted in the XVIII century through surgery lectureships that were established by the Courts of the Kingdom at Pamplona Hospital, between 1757 and 1781: the medical fruits were considerable in the trainning of rural surgeons. The grades on medicine that were being provided by the Benedictine University of Irache from 1613 to 1761, did never involve the correlative teahcing there was no medical faculty at the university that Dominicans had governed in Pamplona (1630-1771). A serious attempt of stablishing in the capital of Navarre a Royal College of Medicine, Surgery and Chemistry, similar to the ones founded a few years earlier in Cadiz and Barcelona, was suggested towards 1780 by protophysician Mauricio Echandi but his valid plan did not finally succeed. In 1817, only the hospital lectureship for surgery was restored and in 1829, a Royal College was inaugurated, wisely planned and directed, which life started with a firm step, but went through political circumnstances that led it to its decline and closure in 1839, just when Navarre lost its status of Kingdom. In 1866, the Regional Council tried to promote a Basque-Navarre University, which was subsequently reduced to a Faculty for the three health professions, but it failed.